St. Louis, MO. – SAFC®, part of the Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (NASDAQ: SIAL), today announced a licensing agreement with Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) making SAFC a preferred partner of Agilent in the sale of Agilent’s new nucleic acids synthesis products and technologies. This additional range of products compliments well SAFC’s robust Proligo® Reagents portfolio. The product line addition builds on a previous licensing agreement and covers Agilent’s proprietary TC-RNA Phosphoramidites which are highly regarded innovative chemistries that can enable customers to produce RNA based oligos in the same timeframe as DNA based oligos.

With these amidites, oligo houses, pharmaceutical companies and other Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMOs) can streamline deprotection processes resulting in consistently high quality products that can be offered at competitive prices. Agilent’s proprietary TC-RNA Phosphoramidites are expected to provide customers with time and cost savings though improved efficiencies in oligo synthesis and shorter coupling times. This is expected to enable scientists to build longer oligos than has historically been possible, opening new opportunities in targeting iRNA.

The products to be offered by SAFC under the licensing agreement are O2’-TC RNA Amidites, specifically rA(bz), rC(ac), rG(ib) and rU. The products will be offered in prepackaged configurations to ensure ready-to-use availability for the most common synthesizers in the market: ABI 3900™, Expedite™, and MerMade. Initially, 0.5 and 1.0 gram packages will be available. Bulk configurations are planned to be in inventory at SAFC’s St. Louis, Missouri and Hamburg, Germany facilities.

“With over 25 years of experience in amidite chemistry, SAFC has built up significant expertise in producing large scale RNA chemistries with their primary focus being to develop, manufacture and sell amidites,” commented James Powell, General Manager at Agilent’s Nucleic Acid Solutions Division. “Leveraging our historic relationship with SAFC and Sigma-Aldrich, we are making our products available through a trusted manufacturer with proven, consistent high quality and know-how, which has the capacity to scale-up to meet market needs. We believe these factors will drive sales globally while providing unrivalled technical and customer support.”

“SAFC is committed to understanding and offering solutions to our customers’ manufacturing challenges,” added Sobia Nayyar, Global Market Segment Manager, SAFC. “Agilent has invested significantly in developing high quality amidites which provide a more reliable process for RNA preparation. Offering this game-changing technology is expected to help SAFC customers produce RNA based oligos at a rate consistent with DNA oligos and without a cost increase.”

TC-RNA amidites can be obtained through SAFC’s Business Development teams, with the convenience of on-line ordering at www.safcglobal.com/proligoreagents in the near future.

The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as “can streamline”, “resulting in”, “expected”, “will be”, “we believe” or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from products derived there from. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. There is no certainty the SAFC will be able to generate increased sales or profits through its manufacture and distribution of TC-RNA Phosphoramidites. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. In particular, management’s expectations regarding these products could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company’s ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company’s assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich’s current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About SAFC: SAFC is the custom manufacturing and services business unit of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation. We are recognized as a top 10 global fine chemical supplier and trusted manufacturer of specialty chemicals and biologics for the life science and high technology industries. Utilizing global “Centers of Excellence” and dedicated manufacturing facilities, SAFC is often able to resolve development and manufacturing challenges and accelerate the production of custom materials. Our rich portfolio includes high-purity inorganic materials for high technology applications, cell culture products, services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing and biochemical production, and complex, multi-step organic synthesis of APIs and key intermediates. For more information about SAFC, visit www.safcglobal.com.

About Sigma-Aldrich: Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing. The Company has customers in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals, and in industry. Over one million scientists and technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 40 countries and has 8,000 employees providing excellent service worldwide. Sigma-Aldrich is committed to Accelerating Customer Success through Innovation and Leadership in Life Science, High Technology and Service. For more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its award-winning Web site at https://www.sigma-aldrich.com.

SAFC®, SAFC Hitech® and Sigma-Aldrich® are registered trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Biotechnology L.P. and Sigma-Aldrich Co.